Edward Fitzpatrick: Hey, neighbor, great Rhode Island politics on tap

Last week’s debate between the three major Democratic candidates for governor began with a sharp exchange between General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras over pensions and hedge funds, Narragansett Beer and firefighter tears, Wall Street and Smithfield.

Clay Pell dismissed the argument as two politicians “squabbling about what they did do, what they didn’t do.” But while you can understand why Pell is trying to set himself apart, the exchange underscored an important issue (pensions) and punctuated a fascinating campaign season that has three of the state’s rising political stars heading for a collision in the Sept. 9 primary — now just nine days away.

The latest Providence Journal/WPRI poll shows that this has turned into a tourniquet-tight three-way primary, with Raimondo at 32 percent, Taveras at 27 percent and Pell at 26 percent. The potential margin for error is 4.38 percent, which means any of the candidates could actually be up or down by that much.

“There’s potential for it to be a very close primary,” pollster Joseph Fleming said. “But we’ve seen other races where one candidate pulls away at the end, depending on what money is spent and getting the vote out.”

If Raimondo wins, it will be because she has led in campaign spending, Pell has cut into Taveras’ support, public-sector unions are divided, and she has displayed poise in debates while hammering a jobs message and hammering Taveras in TV ads.

“Gina has pulled out to a slight lead,” Fleming said. “But to win, she needs to use all her resources to bump that up another few percentage points with a good ground game and commercials all this week.”

The most recent poll found Raimondo leading among voters over the age of 60 — capturing 35 percent of that vote compared with Pell’s 26 percent and Taveras’ 23 percent. That’s significant because “seniors have heavy turnout in Democratic primaries,” Fleming said.

While Raimondo would be the state’s first female governor, a February poll found Taveras leading among female voters. But the latest poll puts Raimondo at 30 percent among women with Taveras at 26 percent and Pell at 25 percent. Fleming attributed that switch in part to Pell’s surge and ads highlighting Raimondo’s family.

During last week’s debate, Raimondo “came across as very smooth and confident, like someone who feels she has a lead,” Fleming said. While Pell began by defending his resumé, Raimondo began by talking about jobs. And she defended the state pension overhaul, saying she wanted to avert the deep cuts seen in Central Falls. “I watched firefighters cry because they lost their pensions and couldn’t get health care for their wives,” she said.

In the debate, Taveras said Raimondo “stands for Wall Street” — by which he means she’s a former venture capitalist who shifted pension investments into hedge funds, generating big fees for Wall Street firms, while accepting big campaign donations from “Wall Street backers.”

Raimondo’s best line came when she responded by saying, “I’m from Smithfield. I never worked on Wall Street. I started my business in Providence. And everything I’ve done as treasurer has been to help the people of Rhode Island.”

The unspoken rejoinder is that Taveras wasn’t talking about Wall Street as a physical address — he meant it as shorthand for a financial sector that Raimondo was a part of for years.

If Taveras wins, it’s because he has remained in contention despite being outspent and waging a two-front war (with Pell on the left and Raimondo on the right), he has the support of a union coalition, English-language polls might not be capturing all of his Latino support, and he has highlighted his efforts to bring the city back from the brink of bankruptcy.

“Taveras has to draw large blocks of votes from Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket,” Fleming said. “He has been popular among Democrats, and he has strong bases of support in those cities.”

Also, the poll found Taveras leads among voters under the age of 40 — with 35 percent compared with Pell’s 32 percent and Raimondo’s 23 percent.

During the debate, Tavares’ best line came when he responded to Pell’s pride in refusing to accept a dime from political action committees or state lobbyists. “I think it is easy to talk about that when you can write million-dollar checks to your campaign,” Taveras said. “Mr. Pell reminds me a little bit of Mitt Romney who said, ‘If you want to start a business, why don’t you borrow money from your parents?’ Not everyone can do that, Mr. Pell.”

The unspoken rejoinder is that Rhode Islanders kept reelecting Pell’s grandfather, the late U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, even as he wrote check after check during his 36 years in office.

If Pell wins, it’s because he has written million-dollar checks, he has amassed ground troops in the National Education Association Rhode Island (and now the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers), and he’s won labor and liberal hearts by, for example, backing binding arbitration for teachers and considering an increase in the top income tax rate. (Plus, his wife is Michelle Kwan.)

The latest poll shows Pell has more than doubled his support by going from 11.5 percent in May to 26 percent. “He went up with a huge media buy, and no one attacked him,” Fleming said. So while Taveras and Raimondo were pounding each other, voters were only hearing positive messages about Pell, Fleming said. “That helped him surge, and now opponents are realizing they have to take him seriously.”

Among union members, Pell now has exactly as much support as Taveras — 30.7 percent — while Raimondo trails at 20 percent. “The problem is the union vote is divided,” Fleming said. “If Pell or Taveras was getting all the union vote, they’d be way up.”

Fleming noted that in the debate, Pell “made a point to say ‘I’m the progressive Democratic in this race.’ He definitely did better than in the first debate, and he had some good lines.”

For example, while a Raimondo ad touts her investment in Narragansett Brewing, Pell said, “My campaign alone has created more jobs in the state of Rhode Island than Narragansett Beer.” And while a Taveras ad slams him as “inexperienced,” Pell defended his Coast Guard experience, saying, “Mayor, if you had served one day in the uniform of the United States, you would understand what leadership is.”

The unspoken rejoinder is that Taveras has been focusing on the significance of an unpaid State Department internship, not Pell’s Coast Guard experience.

But, hey neighbor, there’s still plenty of Rhode Island politics on tap. In fact, the Republican candidates for governor, Ken Block and Allan W. Fung, square off in a WPRI/Journal debate at 7 p.m. Tuesday.